We know how Edgar Allan Poe felt about being dissed: "The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge" ("The Cask of Amontillado"). No one insulted him (or at least his "Cask of Amontillado" stand-in narrator Montresor) with impunity. Which makes me wonder how he would feel about all the typos that occur when people misspell his middle name "Allan" as "Allen."
I thought about this because I spotted a great Natty Poe mashup t-shirt at the Natty Boh Gear store (624 Thames Street, Baltimore, MD 21231) during this weekend's frosty Fell's Point Fun Festival. I was all set to get it when I realised that it said "Edgar Allen Boh."
Broken Vowels "Not to rain on your parade, but I have to point out a typo on your shirt," I told the vendor. "It's Edgar A-l-l-a-n, not A-l-l-e-n. Don't feel bad, even Maryland Public Television gets it wrong," I added, thinking back to the DVD we recently received at the Enoch Pratt Central Library, Edgar Allen Poe (a 2009 special edition episode of the MPT program Direct Connection with Jeff Salkin).
Mis-Direct Connection DVD
Of course, some vendors selling Poe merchandise avoid the typo snafu by nixing the middle name entirely, like the folks at Natty Poe Baltimore (http://shop.nattypoe.com, 826 W. 36th Street, The Avenue in Hampden, Baltimore, 21211).
Natty Poe
I wonder if the Natty Boh Gear team immediately fixed the typo I pointed out, because a quick search of their online store at www.nattybohgear.com shows the t-shirt in question spelled properly now.
Bohgear's corrected "Edgar Allan Boh" t-shirt
According to the blog "Typo of the day for Librarians," Poe's name even causes problems for catalogers (a painfully-anally-rententive breed who, of all people, should know better!), with Allan often misspelled as Allen — this is a "high probability typo" on the Ballard list and has over 1000 hits in Worldcat.
Moses Ezekial's Poe statue at U of B law School
Not only is Poe's middle name frequently misspelled by those who should know better, but even the Moses Ezekial statue of Poe that stands near the University of Baltimore School of Law has (and had) typos. The monument was erected in 1921 and its original base, inscribed with a line from Poe's poem "The Raven," read: "Dreamng dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before." Not only was the "i" missing from the first word ("dreamng"), but a superfluous "s" was added to the fourth ("mortals").
Fontaine chiseled Ezekial out of a typo
No one insults Poe purists with impunity, which is why Baltimore poet Edmond Fontaine took the grammatical slights personally. According to the blog Life's Little Mysteries:
In 1930, after several years of regularly writing letters of complaint to local newspapers, [Fontaine] finally took a chisel to the statue to remove "the offending letter … for the good of my soul," he explained at the time. Fontaine was initially arrested for chiseling off the "s" but was later released with a warning.
When the statue was moved in the 1980s, the original base was replaced, and the typos corrected.
Fontaine's Fix reminds me of another superfluous S in Baltimore lore, specifically that old Mash's Hams TV and radio commercial: "What's in a name? Mash's unscrambled spells HAMS. And what do we do with the other S? That stands for salt - we throw that away."
Esskay's ham-fisted Mashup
But regarding Poe typos - if only it were that easy to throw them all away like Mash's salt!
Amy and I went to this at the Baltimore Museum of Art on Friday, December 4, and while I am usually wary of these quick film projects, I gotta admit it was great (the rest of Baltimore thought so, too, because there was nary an empty seat to be found). Of the 11 short films inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and the BMA’s current exhibition, "Edgar Allan Poe: A Baltimore Icon," only two were flat-out stinkers - though two films did manage to egregiously misspell Poe's name (it's Allan folks, not Allen; filmmakers, please use spellcheck before rendering your films!). In fact, the quality of the films was so professional that I was relieved to hear afterwards in the Q&A that these films took longer than the usual 48 Hour Film Projects; even with today's digital technology (all were shot with digital video cameras and edited on Macs/PCs) that would be too far a leap in turnaround time for the kind of slick production values in terms of sound, cinematography and set design on display here. The event was a collaboration between 48 Hour Film Project curator/producer Rob Hatch and BMA Director of Public Programming Preston Bautista - the latter of whom, in addition to hosting imaginative events like this, is a pretty good tennis player who can hit winners off his two-handed backhand (I always seem to find myself playing next to him on Baltimore's public tennis courts!).
Anyway, following are some quick observations about the films screened...quick, because I'm tired of blogging and need to get on with living my so-called life.
Nick Prevas drinks to the gal who got away - down the rabbit hole
First up was this impressively professional short directed by and starring Nick Prevas that looked like something that would air on the Sundance Channel's "In Short" series, yet amazingly was filmed in the course of just four days. Taking its inspiration from both "Alice In Wonderland" and Poe's "The Raven," it featured the most imaginative script, beautiful sets, stylish camerawork, a perfect soundtrack and a wonderful sense of humor. Fantastic. (You can watch more Nick Prevas videos on Vimeo.)
If you are lucky enough to own a gorilla costume (no home should be without one!), you just have to tackle Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue." At least, that's what filmmaker (as well as photographer, graphic designer, event promoter, and producer) Jim Lucio thinks. On his Mondo Defeckto web site, Lucio says "I had never really read much Poe, but after reading a good dozen stories, I made the quick decision that I had to do my version of Murders in the Rue Morgue...mostly because there is a killer ape in the story and I happen to have a gorilla suit. My version is as loose as a zoot suit and we took the concept of guerilla filmmaking to the extreme. I've decided to call the short Ape."
Lucio's killer ape is called Wigfoot and seeing him romp around Mt. Vernon landmarks was as much fun to watch as I'm sure it was to film and participate in. There is no narration, just spinning tabloid headlines to advance the narrative, all set against a rousingly raucous Las Vegas Grind garage soundtrack.
The camera work was handled by local videographer Bardot (aka Billy McConnell - but not to be confused with Keith Richards, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Al Pacino, or The Fonz), which makes sense because this is his sort of thing - clever, hip, and funny. Oh, and my friend Renee Reabe makes a cameo as Wigfoot's first victim; gotta admit, she looks great dead!
Ben Winter may be an electrical engineer undergrad at University of Maryland, College Park, but I think he should switch his major to film because this was great. Every aspect of this adaptation the Poe tale "Ligeia" was professional, from the casting to the sound, lighting and camera angles (I loved the looking up from a coffin's POV shot!). Plus, the titular Lady Rowena was played by Rachel Cora Wood, who is a total babe - even as ash-white food for worms. Look for her in the upcoming TV series Past Life, the pilot of which was shot down at the Enoch Pratt Central Library earlier this year under the working title "Reincarnationist."
The funniest film of the night and my personal favorite. What a delightful discovery: I subsequently learned that Chris LaMartina makes live-action horror films and has garnered a bunch of awards, including "Best Local Filmmaker" (Baltimore City Paper, 2006) and "Best B-Movie" (2009 Shockfest International Film Festival). This adaptation of "The Black Cat" was made using what LaMartino describes self-deprecatingly as his "crude animation," but it was really no cruder than that seen on South Park. And bonus points for turning his narrative into a rhyming poem!
I honest to God can't remember a thing about this title. Wait, was this the one where the wife hears something go bump in the night and sends her husband downstairs to investigate? And it turns into a lesbian-tinged love triangle double-cross con job with a nod toward Bound? If so, very good and well-shot. And downright scary before the clever denouement!
I think Ricky Johnson is the same Towson University film grad who did the "Prince of Poop" short about Chris Jensen (CEO of Jensen "Your Poop Is My Bread & Butter" Plumbing Company and former "Baltimore Turd Tsar" under the O'Malley adminstration). This trailer, clocking in at a minute and a half, was short and sweet and - more importantly - funny!
LIFE IN DEATH by Franciska Farkas, Diana Gross, Amy Genevieve Kozak
Wow! Technically the most jaw-dropping production of the night and a crowd favorite. If it was a picture instead of a film, it would hang in the Louvre. Franciska Farkas (Work In Progress Productions) is a motion graphics specialist for Johns Hopkins Medicine - and that background certainly shows in this slick adaptation of Poe's short story "The Oval Portrait" in which a picture seems to come alive only to reveal that its subject has actually died. Poe's influencial tale inspired elements of Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Birth-Mark," and is even cited in Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie. Farkas' collaborators include include documentarian/digital media teacher Diana Gross and Amy Genevieve Kozak, who is engaged in a campaign to "promote greater understanding, empathy, and love in the world" (a rather tall order by anyone's standards - good luck with that!).
THE PURLOINED LETTER by Many Americans Productions LLC
You can tell this was conceived and shot by actors because it's all headshot close-ups and self-indulgent yapping, as if the thesps thought the audience would be captivated by their acting chops. As some pompous arse swills cognac and chomps on a cigar (I guess he was trying to convey the suaveness of Arsene Dupin) in a claustrophobic headshot, the camera cuts to a doe-eyed blond's claustrophobic reaction headshot, and back and forth until I found myself dying for a medium or long shot just to relieve the video-vertigo. The sound levels and light exposure were inconsistent and the whole production had the feel of amateur home movies. Let actors write food orders at the restaurants where they work during the day and leave the directing to directors.
RECESS by Bryan "Grasshoper" Robinson I still don't see the Poe connection, but it was interesting and the filmmaker was funny in the Q&A afterwards. I usually hate Q&As because most of the time it's just spotlight time for film geek wannabes in the audience to show off and talk about themselves, but when one "I'm a filmmaker myself" nerd asked techie questions about what kind of camera each filmmaker used, Grasshopper replied, "A video camera." Ha! Short and to the point.
THE TELL-TALE HEART by Stephanie Barber
Excruciatingly lame, but blissfully short.
The film opens with close-up of an ear. Then we hear the sound of a human heartbeat. Then there's a long, long, long shot of wooden floorboards. The shot is held until you can sense the audience's communal response of "Is that it?" Slow fade to credits. We get it, and we are underwhelmed. I later read somewhere that the filmmaker "redistributed" found footage from some 1941 black-and-white German short by blah-blah-blah - which I don't understand because it's not that hard to film a close-up of an ear of wood floorboards (so why bother?). But then, I'm not an experimental filmmaker, so what do I know? If it didn't need to be explained to mere mortals, it wouldn't be experimental, I guess.
SIMOOM by Rahne Alexander Official site: www.rahne.com
This is what experimental filmmaking's all about. Mondo montage mania that's ab-so-f**king-lutely awesome! Renaissance Woman Rahne (music-film-literature, etc.) takes found nautical footage from silents, Hollywood features, and Gilligan's Island to reference Poe's "MS. Found In a Bottle" and then dissects, distorts, and manipulates it to death, all set against an insane barrage of spoken/musical sound that replicates what it must be like to be schizophrenic. Loved it. Just about everything Rahne is involved in is interesting and worth checking out.
OK, technically this may have been the most professional production with its overlapping "fine arts" triptych of ballerina, classical orchestration, and an austere/gray-haired/bespectacled orator reading Poe's poem - but it also went on way too long, resulting in it being kinda boring. I felt like I was watching one of those "Live from the Lincoln Center" specials they run during fundraising drives on MPT. The technical pedigree-in-the-C.V. is certainly there - Aaron Shipley has a BFA in Art and Design and Thomas Fant is an AV techie for Baltimore City...but ultimately the execution is a little dry: a good idea stretched perhaps 5 minutes too long..
They didn't show this, which disappointed me because 2007 and 2009 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize finalist Karen Yasinsky's films rock and she's a sweetie to boot!
